Unreal Engine 5, [UE5 Developer Availability 2022-04-05]

[iroboto]

Agreed, awesome tech demo. Now let's see some games launching using the engine.

BTW, 1 nitpick. When she walked through the water looked janky.

Tommy McClain

lol that was your nitpick?

lol haha, I was actually upset that she squeezed herself between 2 walls. Classic (loading the next level) QTE cinematic event hat we called out everyone on. But when she was flying out in the desert at warp speed, I was satisfied.

 

[ultragpu]

I want to dream it so, but, there will always be time and money as limiting factors for game development so I wouldnt expect everything to be as great.

That's true. While on the other hand, wouldn't this shorten the dev time for eliminating the creation of LODs, Normal map extractions, etc? I guess we'll find out in time.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The words "billions of polygons" and "no need to optimize" makes me worry about framerates... But anyway, at least in this demo it worked, and that end sequence was a good showcase of the benefits of Sony's SSD solutions, I think.

Yeah, the frame rate looked fine but you have to wonder how hard UE5 is unnecessarily working with gigantic assets behind the scenes and what scope there is to have everything run faster with core assets in the ballpark of video games rather than movies.

 

[iroboto]

That's true. While on the other hand, wouldn't this shorten the dev time for eliminating the creation of LODs, Normal map extractions, etc? I guess we'll find out in time.

Yea it should. If the engine is doing all the heavy lifting, then yes. A lot of labour on art budgets can be used on just making 1 version of what you need and moving on. Instead of the rework to fit things in.

You can still go over budget. World builders will still need to adhere to limitations; if ti's not I/O limitations, it'll be compute limitations.

 

[London Geezer]

The way I understand it is that the artist will have a multi-million polygon asset, or whatever the number is, and only need to reduce it to the highest possible LOD that the PS5 can take (also in terms of storage) without the need to create multiples of the same asset for each LOD step. The system will simply dynamically scale the geometry down according to the distance. Which also means there is no visible LOD swapping going on.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Nope. Those original assets are too big to fit onto a BRD. Multi-terabytes downloads aren't an option. Storage capacity will be the bottleneck. But the software side of processing geometry looks almost like a solved problem at first glance.

they said the imported straight out of zbrush without generating lower lods. The statue model had 33 million polygons.

 

[AzBat]

lol that was your nitpick?

lol haha, I was actually upset that she squeezed herself between 2 walls. Classic (loading the next level) QTE cinematic event hat we called out everyone on. But when she was flying out in the desert at warp speed, I was satisfied.

I didn't get to see the whole demo while at work. Probaly missed a few minutes from the beginning. That whole walking through water was just jaring. The flying was amazing.

Tommy McClain

 

[iroboto]

Nope. Those original assets are too big to fit onto a BRD. Multi-terabytes downloads aren't an option. Storage capacity will be the bottleneck. But the software side of processing geometry looks almost like a solved problem at first glance.

so you're suggesting those assets are so large, we're in the 500 GB range for this demo? A lot of it might just be the same asset reused. It may not be so large. So perhaps games will still be around 90 - 100GB, but no re-copied assets.

 

[eastmen]

looks great , can't wait to see some real games using the engine.

I remember how hyped this got me

 

[Ike Turner]

this should actually save time. You don’t have to generate lods and normal maps. You just import the original asset.

Generating a normal map takes literally less than 10 seconds today... Manualy creating a LOD1 (decimation+retopo) of a static asset (non animated mesh which is what Nanite is used for) takes at most a few hours if a semblance of quality is required (if the asset has to be see upclose or not) sub-sequent LOD2/3/4 (or even LOD1 for most props) are done in one click through various softs (InstaLOD) or even within the engine like right now in UE4 for example.
Not saying that Nanite isn't awesome (it is, especially because normal mapping sucks at preserving high frequency details & high poly is the only really solution for realistic shadowing) but people are easily getting cought in the hype.

 

[Karamazov]

Also, only one character, and see didn't composite well with the scenery lighting. I wonder what the limits are with other characters in play?

One character, but what about those 500 forgotten statues ? : (

 

[ultragpu]

Was this running in native 4k on PS5? Heard Geoff mentioning "seeing this running at 4k" but wasn't sure if it's native or not.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I didn't get to see the whole demo while at work. Probaly missed a few minutes from the beginning. That whole walking through water was just jaring. The flying was amazing.

Yeah, the water stuck out. And not in a good way.

 

[London Geezer]

1440p 30fps according to DF.

 

[iroboto]

Also, only one character, and see didn't composite well with the scenery lighting. I wonder what the limits are with other characters in play?

Well it's not using RT based lighting (augmented though I think). They may have added some additional lighting so that you can always see your character in 3P view.

 

[manux]

I'm completely sold. Of course tech demos are easier than games. That said I cannot wait to see what sony 1st party studios are going to do with ps5. I wonder how much of this fidelity is thanks to ssd and being able to pull in high detail resources on demand.

 

[eastmen]

Digital foundry on it

 

[Shifty Geezer]

they said the imported straight out of zbrush without generating lower lods. The statue model had 33 million polygons.

For a demo, sure. The entire 800 GB of PS5 SSD is filled with the one scene, perhaps.

so you're suggesting those assets are so large, we're in the 500 GB range for this demo?

Let's do some very foggy maths. Every triangle consists of 3 vertices, but let's say we can optimise for one vertex per triangle. Positions needs to be defined in 3 dimensions at 2 bytes for 16 precision (which is I'm sure is too little and they're 32 bit...) That's 6 bytes per vertex x 33 million is which is 200 million bytes for one statue.

Feel free to pick your own numbers and compression to try and get a whole world made out of source-data quality onto a 100 GB game. I look forwards to seeing people's creative data manipulation to come up with a solution to this.

 

[Karamazov]

tech demo but with game logic still, and AI driven bugs and bats, physics driven falling rocks and backgrounds, ETC....

 

[Ike Turner]

One character, but what about those 500 forgotten statues ? : (

Instanced static meshes ≠ animated model